If you’ve been following us recently, you may know much like many others in the beer and hospitality
industry, Modern Times has been through a tough two years—tough enough that we’ve recently had to
make major cutbacks to both our personnel and our geographic footprint.

Let’s focus on the most important thing first. Modern Times remains committed to our drinkers, our brews,
and delivering great times when you visit us. Through the challenges, our coworkers, distributors, buyers,
drinkers, and patrons have been and continue to be vital to us.

Today at 5PM, we will close our doors in DTLA, Santa Barbara, Oakland, and Portland. We have so many great memories at these spots; a whole lot of rad beers—and even radder people—have sat at our bars, and we are eternally grateful to every person that had a hand in making these places what they were.

Thank you to everyone who has come out over the past few days; our kitchens are officially out of food, and are moving through packaged and draft beer and coffee swiftly. We heartily encourage folks to swing by and close it out strong.

Today is the most difficult day we’ve ever had at Modern Times. Over the last two unimaginably challenging pandemic years, we’ve done everything we could to keep all of our newly-opened locations afloat in a landscape we never could have imagined when we began building them. As new leadership has stepped up and taken the helm over the last few weeks, it became clear that the financial state of the company that we are now tasked with directing is not just unsustainable, but in immediate and unavoidable peril. As a result of this, we are forced to make some incredibly hard choices, which—while necessary for the health and continued success of our company—will result in many of our talented, hardworking staff losing their jobs.

BIG SHOUTOUT to vanilla for consistently killing the adjunct game and pumping up the pastry jams. For those of you who are familiar with our stout program, you are also familiar with vanilla in its many forms. If you’re seeing vanilla in a beer description, it usually means we used around a pound of vanilla per barrel (with exceptions like last year’s MT: ULTRA Vanilla, which used a total of 24lbs), and we tend to harness the powers of multiple kinds in order to conduct a truly masterful symphony of vanilla flavors.

San Diego, CA (January 5th, 2022) —The past year at Modern Times has been one of both challenge and change. Alongside the rest of the world’s independent businesses, we’ve experienced one of the toughest periods imaginable. We’ve also had our own moment of reckoning as our industry was called to the long-overdue recognition of its—and our—shortcomings in critical areas of representation, equity, and accountability. We’ve made some difficult decisions and dealt with some even more difficult realities, and we’ve done everything in our power to listen, reflect, learn, and come out the other side a wiser, stronger, and more equitable company.